


The Marriage of Martha Manning

by Zordosia (orphan_account)



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Canon Era, Closeted Character, F/M, Forced Marriage, Implied Sexual Content, Period-Typical Sexism, Pregnancy, Standing Outside John Laurens's Window Playing "You Oughta Know" by Alanis Morissette, friendship breakup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-22
Updated: 2016-09-22
Packaged: 2018-08-16 18:21:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8112577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Zordosia
Summary: The women around her tell her they’re in love, but they’re so unhappy, that Martha figures being in love isn’t worth much. She just wants to be friends with the person she marries.An account of Martha and John's relationship, from Martha's perspective.





	

When they’re fourteen, John tells her about how there’s no escape. They’re hiding in a study while their fathers drink and talk together, and he had been telling her about how his sister was always saying it was unfair that he got to learn things she didn’t. Martha tells him that his sister’s right, it’s not fair. John tells her that it doesn’t matter, that’s not what women do. He tells her that she’s going to marry a man, he’s going to marry a woman, he’s going to be a lawyer, she’s going to have children, and there’s nothing either of them do to get away from it. She’s heard as much before, from the books that tell her how to be a woman and from her aunts and from her mother, but from him it doesn’t leave her feeling sad like it normally does. She thinks it’s because he sounds sad too. “It’s not fair,” she tells him. She squeezes his hand. “It doesn’t matter,” he says. They play cards together until they both nod off, and John’s father wakes him up and takes him home.

Three years later he’s back in London. Martha’s lowered her expectations by then. The women around her tell her they’re in love, but they’re so unhappy, that Martha figures being in love isn’t worth much. She just wants to be friends with the person she marries. She figures if she can do that, her life will be bearable. As is, it’s crawling further and further from bearable every day, mostly just social functions where people make fun of the traces of her West Indies accent behind her back. At first, she thinks it’ll just be nice for them to have a new accent to make fun of, but being around John really does help. They both have their manners, of course, they talk and discuss and joke pleasantly enough, but they often seem to end up slipping out of the parties together. They find a quiet place and talk about John’s dead brother, Martha’s dead sister, how much John misses South Carolina, how much Martha misses St. Kitts.

Sometimes, though, the noise and the people are just to much. Then they just sit there, in silence. Martha’s mother always called those times when she got overwhelmed her “moods.” John doesn’t just understand her “moods,” he gets them too. When Martha offhand mentions that she learned a bit about medicine- not much, never much- John gets all excited, starts going in to all the classes he took. He tells his sister to write her, and when he finds out Martha still hasn’t received anything, begins to pester her (Martha eventually receives a very lengthy letter from her detailing Martha Laurens’s own medical learnings, as well as a few embarrassing anecdotes about John). The two of them have fun together, Martha realizes. And more than that, they understand each other. Martha knows John loves to talk about his home, his friends, what he’s reading. John knows Martha loves all the scraps she can get of St. Kitts, of friendship, of the rest of the world. John knows the look in her eyes that means she’s horribly anxious but stuck in a crowd, Martha knows the smile he gets when he’s massively depressed but mired in work and expectations. But best of all, he’s honest, he doesn’t tell her what she wants to hear, he drops the pretense of being in control of his life, just like he did in that study three years ago. “You’re my best friend,” he tells her at one point, and ok, this can work, she can do this.

They’ve both been drinking a bit, when they have sex. It’s all wrong. John won’t look her in the eye, he’s so nervous, everything keeps stopping and starting. It takes forever, she’s almost bored. He leaves immediately after, and it would just be pragmatism, him not wanting to be caught in her room, if he had said a word to her before he left. This isn’t what her friends and cousins were giggling about and telling her to “just you wait” for. Something’s wrong. And yeah, she’s read all those books, she’s listened patiently to her aunts and to her mother but this, this is not her fault. She tells him that in the morning, after she’d been sitting in bed all night getting more and more disgusted with herself. He’s furious, tells her she’s weird, she kept moving around, her vagina smells terrible, she’s so loose, how many men had she even been with? But she may not be as smart as John, as well read as John, as worldly as John, but she knows that this isn’t her fault.

They don’t talk much after that. She misses a period. Then another, then another. And Martha just cannot believe her luck. This is what you always wanted, right Martha? To marry and have a family with your best friend? Isn’t everything just perfect?

She doesn’t even pretend to be happy when she tells John. This way, she thinks, she can think that his expression, a mixture of angry and terrified and numb, is because he’s empathizing with her, not because he doesn’t care about her enough to even pretend to be happy. They dawdle into marriage as her parents fuss over her. John sleeps in the room next door. Every day he walks in, on the pretense of having breakfast with her. Every day she tells him there was no miscarriage. After that, they’re quiet a lot of the time but sometimes, especially towards the end of the pregnancy, they talk. Mostly about what they’re going to name the kid, if it’ll be a boy or a girl, how much it’s kicking, what their house is going to look like. It should be scary to talk about, but it’s not, because there’s still that hope that the child will make their lives wonderful. And they both need that hope. Then, one of them might try to start one of their old conversations, one of the ones that was raw and reminded them that they weren’t alone. It’s always done in horrible, stilted ways, a wooden “what was your mother like?” or “do you hate me for doing this to you?”, and it never quite works because they’re never completely honest anymore. But they still get some residual warmth from it.

But he can’t even be honest with her when he tells her he’s leaving. To fight in a war. He does it all gentle, all smiles and soft tones, because they’re already married so what’s the point of scaring her into a miscarriage now. But she’s his best friend, she’s his wife, she knows him. This is his way out. When he leaves, he sends her a letter telling her that she must stay in England, stay safe and pregnant and far away, because he loves her so much. And at that point she’s so angry that being an ocean away from him does seem like the most loving option, though Martha would settle for his head on a stick.

Her labor is difficult. The child is sickly. But the child missed her chance to die, in those six months they spent waiting for a miscarriage. Martha had to marry John, she will be damned if this child dies now. When she holds her daughter all safe and healthy and cooing for the first time, she’s terrified, because what if Martha resents her, what if she can never see anything but her terrible marriage in this blameless child, what if she can’t love her. But Frances has inherited her father’s knack for being difficult not to love.

She writes John a lot. She remembers those breakfast conversations and thinks that he might want to know that he doesn’t need to just be hopeful anymore, she knows now that this life is good. Everything Frances does seems so amazing that she figures that this is her hook, who could resist the little gurgle she makes when she’s happy or how her hair sticks up all funny in the morning. John rarely writes back. She even goes to his father, imprisoned in the Tower of London. Back in one of their lonely talks, John had told her how his father’s disappointment was the most painful thing in the world. Martha would feel guilt about using that piece of information against him, but she had told John about how terrified she was of being miserable and lonely for the rest of her life, and he doesn’t seem too worried about that. Maybe he resents her for it, though, because his letters don’t get any more frequent. But Martha guesses the real reason is that he has a new best friend. It’s alright. Frances is giggling, walking, talking, growing. She’s so honest, so funny, in the way kids are. She’s so sweet, and a good listener. Martha never really had much to be proud of before now. But she’s so proud of Frances.

He doesn’t tell her when he’s in France. She hears from his father. It’s humiliating, Henry watching her be all stuttering and confused with a by now very familiar expression of practiced pity, telling her that John’s been very busy, and in any case, he’ll talk to him. She waits and waits for a letter and then she’s done. She makes preparations to go to France, with Frances. Because she wouldn’t deny John his family. She’s not cruel.

She gets there and he’s already gone. Then she gets sick.

Because of course this is how she dies. Of course she’s away from her friends and family and home. Of course she’s going to leave her four year old daughter at the mercy of others, in a hostile foreign country. The most horrible, awful thing, though, is that towards the end, when Frances curls up with her, she’s glad this is how it’s happening. Frances is her best friend. And she doesn’t want to die alone.

**Author's Note:**

> I like John, we all like John, but the way he treated Martha really is indefensible.
> 
> Originally posted on tumblr, where I can be found at theoroark.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading, and any comments or kudos would make my day!


End file.
